Slashdot Mirror
The Art of the Tech Demo
Alan writes "A lot of people underestimate the significance of a good technology demo. A good tech demo can be more important for a GPU product launch than even benchmarks. However, this means more than just pretty graphics or complex shaders. In my final article to the industry, I explain what the art of the tech demo is all about.
"
1st
I just rendered FP?
We've been doing it for years..
http://www.scene.org
The Linux community likes to hide behind the mantra of free and open
software for all and as such has the twisted mindset that all software
should be free for everyone. This should come as no surprise seeing
that the Linux community seems to take pride in stealing anything they
can get their hands on and breaking laws designed to protect IP at the
same time.
Linux users have been advocating downloading Microsoft True Type Fonts
for years mostly because their own fonts and font system in general
has been so horrific that Linux screen fonts in most stock installs
are almost unreadable. Of course they will claim that Linux fonts are
great but if that were really the case why is the internet clogged
with Linux Font DeUglification documents written by Linux users?
They even have documents that give a step by step procedure for
stealing the Microsoft fonts and installing them on Linux systems!
Notice in particular the instructions for the Tahoma font.
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/mini/FDU/truetype.htm
http://corefonts.sourceforge.net/
Next we have Linux users violating the EULA for the X-Box and
tinkering with it so that it can run Linux.
Why on earth any sane person would want to take a bitching game
machine like X-box and ruin it by installing Linux is a mystery to me.
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/index.php
http://xbox-linux.sourceforge.net/faq.php
Pay particular attention to the question about it being illegal and
how they avoid answering the question.
They are also doing the same thing with Sony Play station as well.
http://playstation2-linux.com/faq.php
None of this is going to hold up in a court of law and the Linux
people who are leading these projects are looking for some serious
trouble should Microsoft and Sony decide to pursue this matter.
Finally we have the suit filed by SCO which claims that the Linux
community at large has incorporated stolen code into it's open source
programs.
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,3959,936269,00.
This should come as no surprise to anyone who has followed the Linux
movement from the day Linux wrote the kernel.
The Linux community has proven themselves to be a fight to the end,
steal whatever can be stolen from big business because it is big
business that is killing Linux.
The Linux community has absolutely no respect for the property of
others and will resort to any type of clandestine tactics to steal
whatever isn't cemented down all in the good name of Linux.
So if you are thinking of betting your business on Linux software, you
had better think it over carefully, because if SCO should win, Linux
will be out of business.
And if SCO should lose, do you really think it is wise to bet your
entire business on software that is supported by a community that
promotes stealing and in fact is full of thieves?
Food for thought.
...there actually used to be a demo scene which really turned out some amazing stuff. My favorite demo group of all was the Future Crew, and Second Reality did some really pretty neat stuff on some pretty mediocre hardware. Though, the VLB card I ended up getting sped up significant portions of some of the more intensive portions of the demos (i.e. the concentric rings in Second Reality).
:)
I used to leave it running in a loop at work so we could sell more computers.
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
1 .invent ??? .make cool tech demo .profit!
2
3
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One of the demos they go over in the article is the Animusic demo for ATI's Radeon 9700.
That was one of the cooler demos I've seen. The graphics aren't that special but paired with the sound the scene comes alive.
... In my industry, demo's (or, more appropriately, demo songs) have been a staple part of the released product for years.
... because musicians will often hear a 'demo song' and think to themselves "sounds great, but I could do better", and the moment someone is thinking that about a song on your product (in my business), you're closer to a sale.
...
...
Okay, demo songs for synthesizers are not often the 'best' example of what the synth can do. But this is also a good thing, sometimes
IF the demo is interesting enough 'sounding' to get their attention, but turns out to be pretty 'uninspired' as a song, then this leads the musician/customer to think 'okay, great capabilities, poor execution in the track, I'll take it and see what I can do better'
Its been known for a long time that a demo need not be 'superlative', just "demonstrative of the technology you're trying to sell", and not much else. When was the last time you heard a "Hit Demo Song" coming from a synth? But, I'll bet you anything that the demo songs on most modern synth gear these days contain factory patches that you'll recognize as sounds in popular songs, and no matter how cheesy the track is, if it somehow shows you what is 'possible' with the hardware, even if its naff, then you're closer to a sale
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yup. I can attest to that. Being part of a GPU design team myself.
If only we hadn't have used the goatse man as part of our tech presentation on the big night, we might still be around.
--
The last digit of pi is four.
... Soviet Russia the Tech demos you!! ... Ok... sorry, I couldn't resist (it's monday after all).
and what did the Wikipedia ever do to you?
I think the general public would apprecaire an ASCII goatse crapflood on slashdot more.
...Boobs! - They seem to be rather obvious to show off high polycount and advanced shading techniques. Furthermore they are also a good place to show off your great dynamic-body-physics-engine(TM).
... insert more good reasons to show boobs in tech demos here...
A very successful integrated solution salesman, with whom I once had the pleasure of working, had a very relevant quote for here:
"Do a demo, lose a sale."
The deeper explanation is that so many salespeople come to call with "gadgety" demos and slides. The really successful salesperson LISTENS to a customer's problems and tries to work out a solution in common.
Have you Meta Moderated t
I agree , I have seen many impressive demos ( in various formats and guises) , but I thought it was just the fact that im older now , that that wow , almost wet myself it was so good feeling was not there anymore, looking back on some of the things I thought where great back in the day (1989) , granted they have lost there wow factor now , but nothing these days comes close, SGI used to be really good at the wow factor
In the end, many people go with the brand-name they prefer and that's where the tech demo comes in.
Many people are also like me who just look to see who has the best Linux drivers. (nvidia, for those wondering)
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yeah it is truly amazing how much the tech demos have been progressing in the past few years, I just recently watched an NVidia demo that was just a few months old and compared to the new one for the 6800 series it looked awful, you could see a big difference, we're definitely progressing *remembers seeing an article about how some gpus have more transistors than a decent processor*
"on the question of brakes I remember when Porsche came to me for help in designing a better system for the 928 s4. After reviewing their design over dinner, I came to the conclusion that the tangerian coefficient of 4 multiplied by the over boost pressure generated when the heat factor and boiling point of mercury reached a stasis in the left rear caliper thus creating a brake symmetry problem. I easily designed a new system over breakfast the next morning that inverted the overpressure mapping and allowed the excess pressure to bleed into the canavarn canister that I installed next to the johnson rod for the turbo.
And that reminds me of the time I was racing cars on an air base and the general saw how good I was and asked me to be a flight instructor on the SR 71, of course they didn't realize that I designed it by my self. so I did that for a while and then I became the chief instructor pilot for the combined military service. This was a bit hard as i was still instructing Seal Team instructors. In my spare time I developed a new turbo enhancement system that took the reverse pressurization flow from the fleegleman valve and applied this pressure at a constant 1.5 bar to the overboost induction Johnson rod, this increased the turbo efficiency by 85% and caused the root mean square of the coefficient of the 4.8 bar under boost over booster to recycle wasted franistan reformer load to get 200% better fuel mileage. Of course the big gas companies bought my patent and then buried it but it was ok because they also funded my secret moon base for further research and development.
Did you know that I invented the TCP-IP protocol? I was working on a movie in Switzerland and the guys at CERN heard I was there and so they asked my advice on a problem they were having. Well I looked and it was immediately obvious that they were over-clocking the tcpip stack at layer 3 and I wrote a little script fix for it for them. They wanted to nominate me for a Pulitzer prize but I simply told them to use it for the betterment of mankind. They of course were amazed at my philanthropic nature but they gave me ½ of Switzerland as a reward. I kept a little hotel on the lake but gave the rest back to the people. They then erected a statue of me and once a year has a ceremony at that site. Its really kind of embarrassing but you do what you can.
BTW Mel also asked me to be the chief camera operator on his new movie but he demanded that I not use my name as he didn't want people to come to the movie to see my brilliant work, but rather to view the story as he intended. I of course, complied with his wishes as he is a close personal friend. Also I have been working on a promising new cure for Alzheimer's in my spare time. I have been working closely with the Regan family as Ronald and I are best friends. and you remember the hunt for red October? Well that was a TRUE story. The president asked me to train the CIA for this eventuality but of course no one but me was fit for the mission so I went instead, please don't tell anyone.........then my buddy Hugh Heffner or Hef as his personal friends call him, asked me to shoot the playmate of the year spread and he rented me a 747-400 and i flew it to Fiji with all the models on board --- well one thing lead to another and I slept with ALL the playboy playmates...."
Speaking of 747's did I ever tell you guys about the development I did with the space shuttle? They came to me (of course) and asked my help in developing a recovery system for potentially damaged shuttles. I worked on it a while but didn't have the time to devote to it until I finished inventing the overthruster. Anyway, eventually I came up with a hypothesis that I could land the shuttle on the back of a 747 in flight. Of course like all good ideas, they just laughed at me, so gave them all the specs. And told them to set it up and I would prove it. I went on a secret shuttle launch to re-supply my moon base science lab. After we got the supplies down to the base I flew a perfect return to earth and moved into re-entry posi
Its the naked pixies that influence my GPU purchases. If I am going to drop $500.00 on the latest GPU it better have a naked pixie tech demo. Errr wait didn't NVIDIA try that . . .it didn't make me buy their leaf blower GPU. (remote power station not included - see store for details)
Is how to rig it, of course. To misquote a phrase, any sufficiently advanced technology can be simulated by a rigged demo :-)
I think the importance of tech demoes have diminished greatly in recent years, when cards have had more or less the same capabilities (not speed, maybe) anyways. I mean, a DX9 tech demo is theoretically able to run on any card that can "do" DX9.
:).
Also, when it comes to bragging rights, "prettier tech demo!" just doesn't work on most people. Intangibles like frame rate and features are what people can easily point to.
That's not to say GPU tech demoes are worthless - but in comparison to other stuff, they've had their day in the sun. Fortunately, I predict a long life for them on consoles
-Erwos
Plausible conjecture should not be misrepresented as proof positive.
Bears, balls, tits and ass. All good tech demos speak to this reality.
In the absence of Sludge Vohaul's phone number, developing a good demo is the best choice.
Just in case the server crashes and burns (like they usually do),I have put up a mirror.e mo/ is at http://mirrorit.demonmoo.com/r_706/www.firingsquad .com/features/art_of_tech_demo/
The mirror of http://www.firingsquad.com/features/art_of_tech_d
Note to Mods: When I post mirrors, it's a best guess. I don't know for certain whether or not the site will go down!
The tech demo is how Sony PlayStation 2 was able to stifle the Sega Dreamcast despite platform parity early on.
I think in this case the author is exaggerating the importance of tech demos. I wonder what % of Dreamcast or PlayStation 2 owners have actually seen either of the two tech demos? I think the simple fact that the PS2 was backwardly compatible was much more significant then some stupid tech demo
Most of what the article talks about can be applied in everyday working life.
If you want support for your project, you have to have some kind of demo early on. The boss is much more likely to fund your project if you give him something he can 'play' with. It could be a proof of concept experiment or it could be the GUI of a user app. Some kind of demo is MUCH more convincing that any amount of 'pie in the sky' powerpoint presentations. It's the difference in saying "This works, we can make a pile of money." vs. "This SHOULD work, we MIGHT be able to make a pile of money."
This also applies to getting help for open source projects. People are much more willing to contribute if you give something that works at least minimally to play with.
"In Search of Excellence" by Peters and Waterman gives pretty good detail on how this works. (But I can't give quotes 'cause my dog ate my copy!)
more like a greed/fear/ego based badtoll, where evile ends up eating it's young, if you ask US?
this stuff is unbreakable, & wwworks on/in several (more than 3) dimensions.
from a post meant to be titled:
unprecedented evile nearly disempowered, forever?
(score: mynuts won:-) previously PostBlocked(tm) material reposted)
by a disorganized rag-tag team of a few billion near nobodys, using what was available to them, which was almost nothing?
& just who are some of unprecedented evile's local representative(s)?:
The contract was awarded to Accenture, formerly Andersen Consulting, over two competing contractors, Lockheed Martin and Computer Sciences (a veritas (cess)pool of evile stock markp FraUDsters). Several industry executives and analysts said that the award surprised them and that Accenture had widely been considered the outside candidate.
The award also brought controversy. Accenture is incorporated in Bermuda, and some critics attacked the idea of awarding a contract so valuable and important to national security to a company with its headquarters outside the United States.
After Accenture was named, Representative Lloyd Doggett, a Texas Democrat, suggested the company took advantage of an uneven playing field to win the contract over Lockheed Martin and Computer Sciences.
"If companies truly want to contribute to our nation's security, they can pay their fair share of taxes. If they want a slice of the American pie, they had better help bake it," he said in a statement.
A spokesman for Accenture said that the company paid United States taxes.
Representative Richard E. Neal, a Massachusetts Democrat and a senior member of the House Ways and Means Committee, also questioned the award.
"This decision is outrageous," he said, in a statement. "The Bush administration has awarded the largest homeland security contract in history to a company that has given up its U.S. citizenship and moved to Bermuda. The inconsistency is breathtaking."
the stock markup FraUD/softwar gangster payper liesense hostage grab 'business plan' is looking a little hapless now?
fauxking billyonerrors. sheesh.
lookout bullow. tell 'em robbIE?
all is not lost.
consult with/trust in yOUR creators.... the returns are immeasurable/infinite.
see you there?
Due to excessive bad posting from this IP or Subnet, anonymous comment posting has temporarily (forever, if we had some ept) been disabled. You can still login to post. However, if bad posting continues from your IP or Subnet that privilege could be revoked as well. If it's you, consider this a chance to sit in the timeout corner or login and improve your posting . If it's someone else, this is a chance to hunt them down (like with fuddle's phonIE corepirate nazi bouNTy hunter scam). If you think this is unfair, we just don't care.
10% content 90% adverts/fluff
you could of put that entire article on 1 page, but no, lets split it up into 20*50 word chunks, scatter a few 150x150px screenshots and voilá, you have a content:noncontent ratio that makes print magazines look like encylopedias
boobs... it goes much further than that. boobs are _always_ useful in any kind of advertising or trying to get attention. it's the one thing that always, always works. has for thousands of years.
no matter what the product: slap some boobs on the front, and it sells.
it's not for nothing that bay watch is (still!) the most watched TV show on the planet.
...comes with Debian. Install the "bb" package.
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
id software has also been doing tech demos for years.
The only difference is that other companies wind up making actual games with their licensed technology.
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
The article starts off nicely with:
:-)
Most people here would agree that ATI's latest technology demo, 'The Doublecross' starring their new mascot Ruby (Download the video here) is superbly done.
including a screenshot from said demo. I particularly like the way you can see the scenery behind the girl through her mouth.
I suppose 'superbly' applies to either the realistic look on the girls face, when apparently the back of her head is missing, or that she must have a display in her mouth that displays what's recorded by a camera on the back of her head.
Either way, very impressive!
Just kidding!
All my decent Video cards since the days of my 486 have been NVIDA, and even though ive never had a top or even high end card at the time i bought it, from the frount page of the artical the only ATI demo i can rember seeing or hearing about is Animusic.
Perhpas the lack of seeing ATI demos in stores
and videos of them flaoting the net played a part in my choice of video card.
A bit like a shareware or demo,
try before you buy.
You have 5 Moderator Points!
Which Helpless Linux zealot/MS basher do you want to mod down today?
I don't know what the videocard industry is thinking sometimes. Maybe instead of sinking so many hours of coder time in creating these pretty bits of eye candy for each new product release, they should assign some more resources to the development and QA testing of the actual drivers.
I dunno about you, but I think the last time I bought a video card that came with a rock-solidly stable video driver was the VGA card that came with my 386. For every card since, it seems like it's been a buggy, 90% functional driver at release, an update to 95% functionality and fewer bugs three or four months later, and then no further driver releases as the driver teams have all moved on to the next bleeding-edge chipset.
DVD version.
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
HAHAHAHAHA!
No way. To run MY demos you typically needed to have a GUS, VBE2.0 with a 320x200x32bpp mode (preferably on the right number as well) and a right class of CPU.
Before that it was even worse. I used to do lots of tweakmode stuff etc, just to get the effect to run in a frame on my machine and used hardware tricks to do a wide range of 'impossible' things. If this isn't showing off specific hardware, then I don't know what is. Unfortunately, these didn't become incredibly popular. I wonder why..
These days it's a bit different. I couldn't care less about pixel shaders and other crap until they become both mainstream and standardized. (DX doesn't count for the latter)
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a tech demo."
In summary, boobs make *everything* better.
Get off my lawn.
in chapter 6 of proudly serving my corporate masters, Adam Barr explains the details of a tech demo at Softimage
St. Peter gives hime a lute shows him to a cloud and instructs him to sit on the cloud, play the lute and rejoice.
So the Oracle salesman sits on the cloud, plays the lute and rejoices. Evening comes and St. Peter is coming to the salesmans cloud and asks him how he likes it in heaven.
The guy goes: I'm honest with you, St.Peter. I think it's a pretty bland place."
OK, says St. Peter, instructs the salesguy to follow him and takes him to the express elevator that leads straight to the gates of hell.
St. Peter knocks and the door is opened by Lucifer himself. Behind Lucifer there's an unbelievable scene to be viewed:
Miles and miles of white beach. A nice surf on the ocean. Muscle bound young men and tasty looking bikini clad girls play beach volleyball. Laughter fills the air. There are piles of food and multiple open bars (with an outstanding selection of single malt whiskies).
After having taken in the view St. Peter leads the Oracle guy back to the express elevator which takes them straight up back to heaven.
"Well", says St. Peter. "You have seen what hell is all about and you have to make your final decision now. Do you want to stay in heaven, sitting on a cloud, playing your lute and rejoice, or do you want to go back to hell? But, whatever you do: Your decision is final and can't be changed."
"Alright", sais the sales guy. "I think I rather chose hell".
"Fine", says St. Peter, guides him to the express elevator and down he goes; straight back to the gates of hell.
He knocks and almost burns his knuckles from the hot door. Lucifer opens with a smile and a complete different scenery evolves behind Lucifer:
There's fire and heat everywhere; torchured people with pained faces try to escape their miseries. The screams and yells of the tormented fill the air.
The Oracle salesman is stunned and says: "But, but... this is incredible. I've been here only 15 minutes ago and this place was completely differen!"
"Well", smiles Lucifer: "That was the demo..."
Ok, it's old, but nevertheless illustrates the power of good demo...
ich bin der musikant
mit taschenrechner in der hand
kraftwerk
Well one thing's for sure, even though ATI's graphics demos kick ass, ATI needs more chicks in their demos like NVIDIA has.
-- paper
Note that the DC predates the PS2 by almost a year.
If you want to impress developers, forget tech demos, show them how many units they're going to sell.
Any developer who went for the power of the 3DO learned quickly what the real most important stat was.
The PS1 was the biggest thing in videogaming, it blew away the Saturn and all other comers. It was fresh off whupping the N64 when the DC came out, and my guess is developers felt the safe bet was on Sony's follow-on. They were right.
I apologize. I know full well, I should talk about the graphics demos. Ooo, a Steve Howe graphics demo...
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Back in the days, making a demo was about showing off "software"-skills. A demo was all about coding fancy effects on a broad range of hardware with no support for hardware acceleration whatsoever. :(
Ahh, but now, unfortunately, it seems to have gone the way of "We aren't even going to try to run on your machine unless you have pixel shaders". Which is really annoying as every now and again (every few months), I remember about demos and go and hunt some down, download what are currently rated as the best and then find out I can actually run about 1 in 20 of them...
Man I wish I had money, I so want a 9600XT
The demo scene is still going, just see the massive turnout to events like Assembly in Finland.
Just come to Scene Event in Denmark it's the ten'th time this year and we still get new, cool productions.
-- To dream a dream is grand, but to live it is divine. -- Leto ][